Time
Forever.
By Nick M. W.
The most valuable thing a person can spend.
How often do you get to spend your time doing something you enjoy doing? I bet we spend most of our lives doing things we don’t enjoy, like working in any capacity, listening to idiots talk, or driving anywhere in traffic. Far too much of our time wasted on the type of activities that suck energy from us, for decades until we’ve either put in the minimum number of years to retire or we’ve died. The message has always been to do what you love, so you spend most of your life involved in some shit that makes you happy; and the mission has always been to find that kind of love.
Now it’s the end of August, 22 years into the 21st century, which seems ridiculous even though I go through this every year around this time. Where did the year go? How is it already September? Time keeps on slipping into the future, and this moment in time seems to be critical for humanity.
Technology is pushing us further onward into areas of great unknown, literally. The James Webb telescope showed us images of the far edge of space for the first time, like a Ring camera pointed at Heaven’s door. That instrument of science is casually snapping pictures of the universe beyond its known limits, capturing incredible shots of stars forming and something called the “Phantom Galaxy”.
The Phantom Galaxy (M74), aka a spiral of solar systems approximately 32 million miles away. NBD. Photo provided by NASA.
On a much smaller scale, AI arrived years ago with “smart” tech and brought futuristic gadgets to our living rooms that we had only seen in movies and on TV. A computer that fit in your pocket, and it made and received phone calls. Or, was it a phone that replaced your computer? It took something like 50 years to get from launching the first human into space to the producing first generation of the iPod, but within the same decade when that game-changing little device was released, we shifted the way be bought and consumed music away from record labels distributing a physical copy of the product to streaming services hosting millions of songs for us to rock, for a small monthly charge. We were once again smacked across the face when the iPhone hit the market. It feels like we are on the brink of the next significant technological advancement that spurs a cultural revolution. It’s only a matter of time. There I go with time again.
Time To Say Goodbye
They say “legends never die”. That may be true, but these organic avatars that carry our brains all have expiration dates. The luckiest among us have dates set far off into the future, 80 or 90 years beyond our point of entry. Among those fortunate few, even fewer live lives worthy of legend, thus prompting the aforementioned phrase because those types of folks are rare. Bill Russell and Vin Scully lived such lives. The NBA legend passed on July 31st, and the legendary broadcaster followed him just a couple of days later on August 2nd. These two gentlemen set the standard for excellence and class in different ways, but they both had equally powerful impacts on sports and American culture. Legends may never die, but the legendary among us eventually leave. Nothing is permanent.
Time To Pack Up
One of my older brothers, JJ, recently sold his house here in Southern California and bee-lined it to central Texas for reasons you could probably nail down with a couple of guesses. He spent 40 years out here, arriving from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania the summer he graduated high school way back in 1982. I was only 6 months old then. He lived with us in Alhambra, CA for a few years while he worked his way through the police academy, and he moved out when he became a sworn officer. He’s worn many different hats throughout his life. A few of those years he spent living with us when I was a kid were during and after my mom and our dad got divorced. You read that correctly: “my mom and our dad”. We’re brothers from different mothers. Halfsies. During that time in my life, JJ played the role of “dad”. He did a lot of shit that dad’s do with their sons. He was even tasked with bringing us to see our dad, driving 3 and a half hours to some roadside town between where we lived and where our dad lived. He did that because my mom couldn’t stand the sight of my dad, which made the annual exchange of children for visitation a bit awkward.
Anyway, JJ is the man. We don’t see eye-to-eye on much anymore these days. With our dad long gone, his energy circulated back into the cosmos, JJ felt a certain bit of duty to stick around So Cal be lifted from his heart, and underneath that layer of fat and invisible armor of bravado is a massive heart. The end of his life here in California is the beginning of his life in Texas and what I hope is a happy and peaceful retirement for my big bro. However, my heart hurts a bit knowing that I barely saw him once every couple of months the last few years (and pretty much not at all in 2020), and we only lived about 20 miles from each other. Not far in Cali freeway miles. Now that he’s in Texas…shiiiiit. The way things move, it’ll be some time before I likely make it to his neck of the woods for a visit. Months, maybe years. By that time, who knows?
